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The Amritsar Massacre took place on April 13, 1919, in Jallianwalabagh in the city of Amritsar. The massacre marked a point of no return in Indian politics: it terminated the age of compromise and basic faith in the decency and fair-mindedness of the British rulers so far as politicized Indians were concerned. The massacre and its aftermath signalled the real beginning of mass agitation against British rule in India.
April 13 was Baisakhi, an important religious festival that had attracted people from the surrounding countryside to Amritsar, many of whom gathered in Jallianwalabagh, an open space or park surrounded by houses on all sides. Dyer had published an order banning all public meetings, yet a protest meeting to be held in the Bagh had been called. Hans Raj, a somewhat shifty character who had contacts with the police and later turned approver, was one of its prominent organizers. This has led to allegations that he was an agent provocateur and that the massacre that followed was preplanned. It is certain that a large section of the people who gathered at Jallianwalabagh were not aware of the prohibitory order. Shortly before dusk, Dyer marched to the Bagh, placed his soldiers at the narrow entrance and, without any warning or order to disperse, started firing into the crowd. More than 1,600 rounds were fired, all aimed at the crowd. No exact figures are available for the number of casualties: government sources put the number of deaths at 300 and of the wounded at over 1,000. The Congress Enquiry Committee placed the casualties at over 1,500, with some 1,000 dead. Dyer left the scene with no arrangements for dealing with the wounded.
The operation of the martial law, which lasted three months, included humiliating punishments, such as forcing all Indians to crawl when passing through the street where Sherwood had been beaten. People were picked up arbitrarily, tied to frames set up on crossroads, and whipped.
The British reaction to the massacre, even more than the event itself, hardened Indian attitudes and was one major factor behind Gandhi's decision to launch a campaign of non-cooperation, which eventually resulted in independence in 1947. An eyewitness to the massacre, Udham Singh, had taken a vow to avenge the atrocity and in March 1940 he shot Sir Michael O'Dwyer at a meeting in Caxton Hall, London. Singh was tried and hanged. More than 20 years later, his bodily remains were taken back to India. Jallianwalabagh, a bare and unattractive plot of land, has been transformed by the Indian Government into a park, a memorial to the massacred.
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